Significant advances in medical technologies, improved medical procedures, and ever more highly-skilled emergency response teams have provided great benefits, allowing individuals to live longer and more enjoyable lives, while also mitigating the number and severity of medical complications experienced by individuals. Despite these considerable advances, difficulties inherent in detecting and assisting at the earliest opportunity an individual experiencing a medical emergency remains a major obstacle to providing optimal healthcare.
An individual undergoing a medical emergency is often times too incapacitated to call emergency services, take a desperately-needed medication, or even alert anyone who happens to be nearby that the emergency is occurring. Too often, by the time someone who can capably assist the individual is made aware of the situation and is able to respond, the emergency has progressed to a critical stage resulting in permanent impairment or even death of the individual.
An important complicating factor is that an emergency team seeking to assist the individual is often times forced to treat the individual without any knowledge of the individual's medical history and without any access to relevant medical records. As a result, such individuals all too often suffer irreversible complications, irreparable harm, and even death. Even under the best of circumstances, whenever a healthcare provider must treat an individual without adequate knowledge of the individual's medical history and access to the individual's medical records, the result can be unnecessary, inadequate, or even injurious treatment of the individual.
As a result, there is a need for more effective and efficient mechanisms for providing emergency detection and emergency response to individuals experiencing medical emergencies. More generally, there is a need for more effective and efficient mechanisms for providing healthcare providers with access to critical medical histories and records so as to improve diagnosis and treatment of a wide array of medical conditions. Furthermore, there is a need for mechanisms to more effectively and efficiently coordinate health monitoring, to speed up emergency response times, assist in disease management and control, and ensure the rapid delivery of medical records and other critical information to healthcare providers.